Desktop virtualisation is a solution to many of the challenges businesses face in Africa where resources are often lacking.
This is the view of Citrix Systems country manager of southern Africa, Sean Wainer, who notes that Africa is a fairly untapped growth market for virtualisation.
Earlier this month, Citrix Systems hired Wainer for the virtualisation company's southern Africa top job. Wainer has been tasked to head up the team, generate business opportunities in the virtual computing space and develop the company's channel strategy.
Solving Africa's challenges
“Over the next five years, desktop virtualisation will be a market worth $65 billion,” says Wainer.
He explains that offices in remote African areas such as the DRC require technical resources such as electricity and broadband that is often unreliable and this problem is compounded with a rise in skills shortages.
Businesses cannot afford long periods of downtime and Wainer points out that virtualisation enables technology to be delivered on any platform.
“There are a lot of challenges that virtualisation can solve, such as power challenges, especially with companies that need to be online and operate 24/7.
“Desktop virtualisation enables a user to work on the same document or application on their netbook or iPad in the office and then seamlessly continue working on the same document at home via a desktop computer,” he explains.
According to Wainer, consumerisation of technology is driving the model of working anywhere at anytime.
“We are seeing things like social media becoming business tools. There's a big appetite from business moving into consumerisation and demanding for ease of use.” He adds that the convergence of devices such as tablet PCs and smartphones is becoming critical for business efficiency.
“If organisations want to attract the best talent, they have to give their staff the tools they demand. The idea of sitting in an office is archaic to the new generation. With 3G cards, smartphones, users have the ability to access anything from anywhere on any device.”
Adaptability and agility
Wainer points out virtualisation is no longer an IT-driven function; it's about business agility and adapting to change.
“We see the demand moving away from technology to the business solution. What IT needs to solve is service delivery, business agility, flexibility, productivity and efficiency.”
According to research by Citrix, the South African virtualisation market is expected to grow in spend by 18.9% this year. This is an increase from 3.7% spend in 2009.
Research by Gartner shows that while 80% of enterprises now have virtualisation on the cards only 25%t of all server workloads will be in virtualised machines by the end of this year.
In a report, Gartner research vice-president Philip Dawson, states: "Virtualisation will continue as the highest-impact issue challenging infrastructure and operations through 2015, changing how you manage, how and what you buy, how you deploy, how you plan and how you charge.”
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